


Nine Voicemails Leonard McCoy Did Not Leave For Jim Kirk

by sun_dance



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, break-up fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 17:54:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sun_dance/pseuds/sun_dance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t until one night, about two years down the road and into the Enterprise’s next mission, that he gets drunk enough to go through with it. His liver is practically made of whisky by the time he pulls out his comm, and manages to press the right combination of buttons. He knows he should hang up; he knows that the second he hears the answering machine, he should just hang up, maybe try hacking the system to erase his name, but then the call clicks over to voicemail.</p><p>Bones slumps against a nearby wall, listening with eyes closed and his heart in his throat as Jim’s voice spoke in his ear.</p><p>“Captain James Kirk, USS Enterprise.” Short, sweet; it’s regulation, Bones knows, and he wonders when Jim gave in. He sucked in a lung full of the cool evening air.</p><p>“Do you still love me?” He blurts out, the words strung together like a paper chain made of broken promises. Something shifts in his chest, opens a wall, and floods his entire body with a chill. He hangs up immediately, shoves his comm in his pocket, and walks home with his shoulders hiked up to his ears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Bones rolled out of bed like he had the weight of the entire ocean on his shoulders. He silenced his alarm and rolled his shoulders forward and back, worked his ribs loose one at a time, and finally got to his feet. His body creaked and groaned, leaving him feeling like the Tin Man in need of oil for his aching joints. What really put the icing on the cake was that he wasn’t even _old_ enough to have creaking joints. Loving a Starfleet captain will do that to you, he supposes.

He opened his jaw wide in a yawn, his jaw popping with the force of it, and walked into his bathroom. His morning routine hadn’t changed much since he left the Federation. He still woke up on time, brushed his teeth, showered, ate breakfast, and left home with a cup of coffee in his hand. The only difference was that back on Earth, instead of heading to the medical bay, he headed in to his own clinic.

Most days, he was able to get through his day with calm stoicism. He was friendly with his patients, but careful not to get too close. He often missed a cue here and there, but he wasn’t ready yet; or so he told himself. He wasn’t interested in anyone, hadn’t been since he cut his time on the five year mission short by a year. He tried not to remember how that had gone down; it had been a dark day on the Enterprise when he’d announced his resignation, but no one had questioned it. He and Jim had been sleeping in separate quarters for four months before he officially resigned. They’d all seen it coming, even if Jim had refused to believe it.

Jim. How ironic that the person who made Starfleet bearable was the same person to make it a living hell. If only he’d made it to the end of the mission; at first, he tried to convince himself that Jim would have quit for him. The end of the five year mission had come and gone, though, and Jim had never called. Not once. Uhura, Spock, Scotty, Chekov, and Sulu had all shown up on his doorstep a week after mission’s end, dragged him out to a local bar, regaled him with tales about how their last year had gone.

Jim was suspiciously absent from every single one of them, something Bones had been supremely grateful for. Still, he’d tossed back eight shots in under an hour, and when Spock had driven him home, drunkenly asked why Jim didn’t love him enough. He hated that question for two reasons: the first was that Jim had always loved him too much. The second was that he knew asking Jim to choose between him and the ‘Fleet had been asking for it, no matter how facetious he’d been. It had ultimately proved to be his own undoing.

The worst of it all was that Bones didn’t blame Jim. Not for a second. Unless you asked him on Friday nights, when he went out to the bar and got blackout drunk on Jim’s favorite whiskey; then he’d tell you all about James Tiberius Kirk, and how many times he brought the idiot captain back from the brink of death, and on one occasion death itself.

He’d tell the whole bar about the man who got through Starfleet in three years, and saved Earth not once, but twice; how he gave his own life the second time. He’d tell anyone who would listen about what an obnoxious prick Jim was, and in the next heartbeat tell them about the time Jim refused to leave Chekov behind on a planet, because there was a possibility the young Russian whiz kid wouldn’t make it back to the ship.

On Fridays, Bones tried to forget all about Mr. Kirk, but usually he just ended up trying to comm him while he stumbled home late from the bar.

It isn’t until one night, about two years down the road and into the Enterprise’s next mission, that he gets drunk enough to go through with it. His liver is practically _made_ of whisky by the time he pulls out his comm, and manages to press the right combination of buttons. He knows he should hang up; he knows that the second he hears the answering machine, he should just hang up, maybe try hacking the system to erase his name, but then the call clicks over to voicemail.

Bones slumps against a nearby wall, listening with eyes closed and his heart in his throat as Jim’s voice spoke in his ear.

 _“Captain James Kirk, USS Enterprise.”_ Short, sweet; it’s regulation, Bones knows, and he wonders when Jim gave in. He sucked in a lung full of the cool evening air.

“Do you still love me?” He blurts out, the words strung together like a paper chain made of broken promises. Something shifts in his chest, opens a wall, and floods his entire body with a chill. He hangs up immediately, shoves his comm in his pocket, and walks home with his shoulders hiked up to his ears.

∞

He manages to forget entirely about the phone call. Sometimes, having a brain soaked in alcohol is enough to give you selective amnesia. Still, every time he picks up his comm to call his Gram, he gets an awful twist in his gut, and he feels like he should remember something important. She never asks about Jim anymore; the first time she’d brought up “that nice young man you brought home that one Christmas”, he nearly bit her head off.

He’d spent three months apologizing, but she had never held a grudge against him for it.

Bones’ routine was simple and mundane, something he thought he’d missed while being on board the Enterprise. While it was true that not having to treat your significant other every week was a blessing, he found that he missed the excitement. He missed beaming down to a planet, finding cures for foreign ailments; hell, he even missed the shore leave on the more exotic planets. There had been that one time with the showgirls… he’d never seen Jim so jealous, and had never been so thoroughly claimed as he’d been later that evening.

When Bones drank on his Friday nights, it was usually to forget all about Jim Kirk, even though more often than not he wound up talking all about the young captain.

He manages not to get blackout drunk again for almost six months; it’s on their anniversary that he gets so drunk he can’t remember anything but a name and the smell of sweat and cinnamon to go with it. He’s got his comm ready before he even remembers pulling it out. This time, it goes straight to voicemail, no pause while it clanged wherever in space Jim was. That meant one of two things to the drunk: either Jim had set his comm to ignore his call, or he was asleep. No matter; the recording of his name was ending.

“I found your old sleep shirt in my closet last week. It still smells like you. So do my sheets.” It goes without saying that he purchased the same fabric scenter for his laundry that Jim had used for years.

∞

He doesn’t wait quite so long this time. It still takes him about four months, but it’s a combination of things that drive him to drink. He’s been on three dates in that period of time, but none of them hold his interest. The first woman is one of his pediatric patient’s mother. She’s a knockdown, drag-out bombshell, and the only thing Bones can think the entire evening is how much her eyes remind him of someone else.

He almost calls her _Jimmy_ when she orders a whiskey.

He ends up cutting the date short and stumbling into the bar that he’s come to call _his_ bar. His whiskey is already on the counter before he’s shrugged out of his jacket. He orders three more in the span of ten minutes, and, miserable, tells the bartender he accidentally cheated on his soul mate.

He can’t remember the names of the other two; both were tall, slender, and were so lousy in the sack that he left without saying goodbye. They looked like Jim, had none of the swagger, and he drank so much he wound up in the hospital.

Not before putting in another call, of course. He’d kick himself later for not wishing the Enterprise a Merry Christmas.

“I think you are my phantom limb.”

∞

It’s been 117 days since he left the hospital. He’s drifting through his days in a zombie-like state. It’s probably not safe; he probably gave some of his patients an incorrect dose from a hypo spray, but nobody’s complained and nobody’s died, so he counts it as a win.

He spends most of his time at the bar; he’s practically hemorrhaging money for how many nights he stumbles home in the dark.

He’s not terribly worried about it, though; he’s got a decent sum saved from his time in the ‘Fleet, enough that he doesn’t even flinch when the bartender asks if he wants to buy a share of the bar. It would come with free drinks, a VIP room for whenever he brought guests, and free advertising for his clinic.

He’s drunk when the bartender asks, and he calls him Jim when he finally slurs out an agreement. He winds up taking a girl into the VIP room the very next night, and she spends over an hour sweet talking him until he agrees to let her go down on him. He’s too drunk or too sad to orgasm, and winds up falling asleep on the couch, but not before punching in Jim’s ID.

“Someone told me I looked pretty today, but all I could think about was what you were doing.”

∞

Bones makes it another three months without incident.

Then someone comes in with a dislocated elbow, and he spends ten minutes trying to pop it back into place before the kid (some seventeen year old skater) tells him to go to hell and he’s going to just go to the hospital for treatment.

Bones spends the next three days with his curtains drawn, the clinic closed, and an endless supply of bourbon keeping him company. He hasn’t moved from the couch in that time, and is surrounded by empty bottles when he tries calling again. It takes three tries before he gets the right number.

“I can’t fucking stand how I can still feel your lips on every inch of my skin. I haven’t moved in days.” He drops the communicator to the floor, doesn’t care that it hits a bottle and slips under the couch. He cares the next morning when he can’t find it.

∞

His partner at the clinic calls him to tell him that he’s being sued for malpractice. Bones can’t find it in him to care. He manages to sober up just enough to clean up the day of the trial.

All he can think about the entire day in court is how he forgot to put underwear on that morning.

He’s not surprised when they strip his medical license, but rehab is a bit of a shock. He refuses to go.

Three days later, he’s back at the bar, and he gets into a fight with someone wearing what looks like a Cadet uniform. He later found out that it was just a red jacket, but he could’ve sworn up and down the kid had mentioned Starfleet. He sells back his half of the bar that night, and he’s too drunk to make it home.

“Drinking won’t erase memories. I keep trying.”

∞

Bones leaves rehab a month earlier than the therapist thinks he should. He pushes, though, and convinces them to let him go. He’s fulfilled the court mandated sentence.

That night, he tries to go back to the bar. They won’t let him in.

He goes to another bar a little further from his house. They don’t have Jim’s brand of whiskey, but he doesn’t care. He orders something cheap all night and stumbles home with someone who Bones swore up and down looked like Jim, but when he wakes up the next morning the man has a Mohawk and tattoos all over his body.

Bones untangles himself from the kid, lets himself into the bathroom. The person looking back at him is thin, the eyes are hollow, and hasn’t shaved in months. His hands shake when he pulls at the bags under his eyes.

He pours himself a drink while he eats breakfast. When he makes the call, it’s muscle memory, and he’s not quite drunk enough to dull the pain of Jim’s voice.

“I looked in the mirror and couldn’t find myself. I miss who I was with you.”

∞

Bones checks himself into rehab again. This time, he stays two months after his therapist deems him ready. He goes to four Alcoholic’s Anonymous meetings a week. He doesn’t touch whiskey anymore. He joins a gym. He starts getting back in shape.

He starts dating his personal trainer, Mark.

Mark is shy, dark haired, and dark eyed; he’s the opposite of Jim in every sense of the word. He doesn’t fill the void, but he holds Bones when he needs it. He’s a generous lover.

He doesn’t call Bones “Bones”.

Bones goes through his home and throws everything that reminds him of Jim into a box, including a picture from their first day on the five year mission. Jim had just proposed.

“I’ve put you in a box and I’m giving it away. I don’t need you anymore.”

∞

It’s his wedding day. The one he never got with Jim, because he wanted to wait until all of their combined family could be there.

Mark proposed two days after his would-be anniversary with Jim. Mark doesn’t fidget when he’s grumpy, doesn’t pressure him when he’s being obstinant.

Worst of all, Mark doesn’t let him drink.

Best of all, Bones doesn’t need to drink when Mark’s around.

It’s his wedding day.

Mark is standing at the altar.

Bones is walking down the aisle in the suit Jim had picked out. At the reception, he has only a tiny sip of champagne, and afterward Mark drives them to say hello to the ocean.

That night, after Mark carried him over the threshold of their honeymoon suite and made love to him, he snuck out of bed.

He went for a walk down by the shore, and stood letting his feet get wet, looking up at the sea of stars Jim was currently sailing.

Before he knows it, he’s calling Jim. He hasn’t had a real drink in months.

“I got married today. My mom says she’s proud of me for moving on. I hope you are, too."


	2. Nine Voicemails Jim Should Have Sent Back

After a double shift, all Jim wanted to do was sleep for a month. He’d handled at least fifteen crew disputes, decided on a course of action for a necessary discipline, and now he had two shifts worth of paperwork to file.

He sunk into the chair behind the desk in his quarters, tugging at the neckline of his Starfleet regulation shirt, and pulled up all of the files he needed to complete and log. It was tedious work, and he managed to make it through seven reports in about an hour before he gave up. He backed out of layer upon layer of files, until he was staring at a blank screen. With a groan, he set his elbows on the desk and dropped his face into his hands. He was almost to the end of his tether, and they weren’t even halfway into their mission. For the past two years, he hadn’t slept a single night without dreaming of home.

Home, of course, was not Earth. It wasn’t Iowa or Georgia or San Francisco. Home was Bones. Home was falling into bed after a full day planetside and Bones being there to rub the knots out of his shoulders. Home was the double whiskey that usually sat on his desk at the end of the week, a consolation prize for a week’s worth of triumphs and tribulations.

Unfortunately, Jim’s home was no longer on board the USS Enterprise. Home was somewhere on Earth. Home was hopefully looking up at the sky, wishing they could be with him.

Home had walked out.

Home was gone.

Home had left a voicemail two hours ago.

Jim almost fell out of the chair when he saw the name, blinking right alongside a recording that was 1.82 seconds long. _Leonard McCoy_. It had been a long time since he’d seen that name on his screen. He’d almost imagined it a few times, willing it to spring into existence. Now, two years after missing his chance to reconcile, there it was. Blinking. Taunting.

Jim set down his PADD and padded over to the cabinet where he kept a stash of whiskey. He pulled out a glass and poured a hefty amount into it, swallowed half of it, and refilled the glass. He set it down long enough to peel himself out of his clothes.

When he returned to his chair, he was clad only in black briefs. He knocked back the rest of his drink, relishing the burn as the alcohol made it through his empty system.

He’d forgotten to eat again that day. That marked the third day in a row, by his calculations; he gathered the fragments of his satisfaction from the far corners of the room at the fact that Bones’ head would be spinning right about now, had he not resigned from the ‘Fleet.

He played chicken with the voicemail for two days. He alternated between swearing at Bones, the galaxies between them preventing the words from falling upon his ears, and washing himself in misery.

When he finally plays the sound clip, it takes every ounce of self-control not to comm him back.

He saves it to a file on the PADD that’s labeled _B_., and erases it from his voicemail. He would spend every night for the next two weeks straight playing it over and over, listening to the drunken slurs of the man he was still helplessly in love with.

∞

_Yes_ , Jim wants to scream. _Yes, I still love you_. He’s in the middle of a duel to the death, and the only thing he can think about is how badly he needs to get through this, just to see Bones one more time. He needs to tell Bones he still loves him. He needs Bones to know that, even though he let him go, there was never going to be anyone that could ever take his place.

There are minor cuts all over his forearms; he’s sure Hikaru will tell him later about how many ways he could have prevented them, but right now he’s just focused on surviving. It’s what he does best, after all. It doesn’t take long for him to close the duel, although he’s sure he’s offended the man by refusing to kill him.

They finally manage to beam back aboard the Enterprise, and Jim heads straight for the medbay. He’s leaning heavily on Spock, his arm around the Vulcan’s shoulders, and he’s almost drunk on the blood loss alone.

“Captain, I’m sure I don’t need to inform you that what you did was foolish and illogical.”

“No, Spock, you don’t,” Jim sighed. Spock deposited him on a biobed and stepped back for Chapel to strap on the regenerators.

“Then I will refrain. I must inform you, Captain, that it was one of your finer moments as captain of this vessel.” He’s arching an eyebrow, and Jim holds his gaze for a long moment.

“Thanks.” He settles back in the biobed, and doesn’t even flinch when Chapel delivers a hypospray that sends him off into a sleep that resembles a small coma. By the time he wakes up, his wounds have been fully healed, but Chapel confines him to the biobed under orders to rest and eat. She refuses to clear him for duty for two more days, ensuring that he replenishes his energy stores. Jim thinks she must have taken a page out of Bones’ book, but he doesn’t even try to get out of it.

By the time he’s released from medbay at the end of the second day, there’s a metaphorical mountain of paperwork to catch up on.

As he’s taken to doing in the last few months, the first thing he does is check his comm. He is both surprised and unaffected at the alert that Leonard McCoy had left him another message. He leaves his desk in favor of a shower and another whiskey, and when he sits down he’s wearing an Ol’ Miss sweatshirt that he’d stolen from Bones back at the academy.

This clip is longer than the first. It’s just under eight seconds, but it’s even harder to understand the garbled, drunken words clawing their way out of the small speaker. Like before, he copied the file to the _B._ folder and erased it from his voicemail.

In his spare time, he spliced the clips together; he’s taken to falling asleep to the sound of Bones’ voice, hoarse and drunk and deep.

∞

When the next voicemail comes in, Jim’s on shore leave. He doesn’t hesitate to pull up the sound clip once he’s curled up in his bed.

“I know how you feel, Bones,” he murmurs, and presses back into the Bones-sized pillow he’s little-spooned to ever since he stopped being angry at Bones for leaving.

∞

The fourth, fifth, and sixth voicemails all come in when their communications are down, and arrive all at the same time. By the time he gets them, it’s been a year and a half since the first. He listens to all three right in a row. Bones sounds more and more pathetic every time. It takes every ounce of willpower not to comm him, not to tell him what he wants to say; because as much as he misses Bones, he could never ask him to come back. He could never ask him to come back, not after everything he’d put him through.

Not after he’d practically banned him from the ship.

Jim belonged in space. Bones didn’t. And he knew that if he commed Bones, he’d never be able to hold back the virtual dam containing all of the words he wants to say. He’d beg and plead for Bones to rejoin.

And Bones would do it in a heartbeat.

So Jim doesn’t comm. He doesn’t email or text, but he does sit with a pad of paper and write down every word he wants to say, in a capacity that could never make it to Bones on accident.

He’s got almost forty seconds of Bones on sound clips now.

He listens to them whenever he’s not on the bridge.

∞

It’s the next voicemail that seems to convince Jim how much he needs to leave the ‘Fleet. He’s been in a self-destruct mode since before the start of the mission. He’s truly surprised Spock hasn’t said anything.

He’s had a resignation form filled out and saved on the home screen of his PADD for a month now, but he can’t send it yet. Something stops him every time; maybe it’s the ghost of Bones’ voice echoing around his cabin, yelling at him on that final night about how Jim had married Starfleet long before he’d ever thought about marrying Bones.

Jim had found his engagement ring in an envelope the next day, along with an absence of his belongings.

Some days, when he woke up still pressed against that body pillow, in the moments before he became fully awake, he was convinced this was all a bad dream. He convinced himself, in that odd place of being, that Bones wasn’t a million light-years away. Those mornings were the hardest to get out of bed and go to work. Those days, Jim was especially reckless. Those days, Spock nearly had to carry him back to the ship.

It’s the broken way that Bones says it – _I miss who I was with you_ – that stirs the familiar feeling of longing and pain and heartache that always feels like it’s a breath away. On the bridge, he’s Captain Kirk. In his quarters, he’s the Almost Captain Kirk-McCoy.

He gets himself off to the sound clip of Bones’ voicemails. He’s not proud of it, and there’s no pleasure from it, but it sends him off to sleep nonetheless.

He spends the next two weeks just thinking. He’s got a year left in the mission. All he has to do is stay alive until then, just keep breathing, keep moving forward, and then he could go Home – force Uhura to tell him where Bones lived back on Earth, go track down the drunk, talk to him.

The whole crew notices; he’s more attentive, more alert. He makes fewer reckless decisions. Spock doesn’t reprimand him for _two whole weeks_. It’s a miracle. They all totally know.

And then comes the next voicemail.

∞

The day Bones doesn’t need him anymore, Jim decides, is the day Earth stands still. In other words, it’s a reality Jim refuses to accept.

That didn’t stop him from nearly losing everything on a frozen planet a few days later; it takes a near death experience, a reprimanding from Spock and Uhura, and a two day hangover courtesy of Montgomery Scott for him to decide that he wasn’t done yet.

∞

He gets the last voicemail a month before their return.

For three days, he spends every second wallowing in his bed. The only thing he has to eat or drink during that time are the remnants of his liquor cabinet, which just happens to be a bottle of scotch Bones had bought for them to share on their wedding night. It had gone unopened, and Jim was pretty sure he’d never marry his doctor, so he popped the cork.

When Uhura stopped by his cabin with a tray of plomeek soup (non-replicated, just like Bones always preferred), she took one look at the miserable sight and slammed the tray on the desk.

“Captain.” She snapped, putting her hands on her hips. “ _Jim_. Get your ass out of that bed.” She took a step closer, and thought better of it; there was nearly a green cloud of stench surrounding Jim. She took a deep breath and closed the difference. The first thing she did was rip the blankets off. Jim’s protests were pointless, and he found himself stumbling drunkenly into the attached bathroom. “Shower. Get dressed. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes with something more substantial, since you do not have the flu.” She turned on her heel and left the room.

When she returned, Jim was dressed in the black undershirt, briefs, and slacks that were part of the mandatory uniform. She handed him a sandwich, ignored his confused look (He was pretty sure they didn’t serve sandwiches on the Enterprise), and took the nearly empty bottle of scotch from the desk.

“I understand that you’re going through something right now, Captain, but as your rank implies, you have responsibilities. We all miss Doctor McCoy. No one as deeply as you, sir; however, as we are heading back to Earth in a month’s time, I suggest you start thinking about what you’re going to do to get him _back._ ” With a flick of her hair, Uhura spun around and stomped her way out of his cabin. The door swished shut behind her.

∞

_Bones_. It’s the only thing Jim can think about during his debriefing. He fidgeted and squirmed his way through nine hours of telling the Admiralty _exactly what was in his reports_. If Jim was asked what his least favorite thing about Starfleet was, his answer would include their absolutely ridiculous need to go over everything eight times.

By the time he got out, he was practically _itching_ to hop on a shuttle.

He didn’t even stop at home. He simply grabbed his duffel bag from the pile of other bags and booked a seat on the first shuttle out of San Francisco.

His feet jackhammered into the floor the entire flight.

When the shuttle landed, he hit the ground running. He hailed the first cab and only felt a mild pang of guilt for stealing it from a young couple who had just opened the door. He slipped inside, slammed the door, and ignored their yelling as he told the driver that there was a hundred percent tip if he got him there in less than half an hour.

So there he was. The Georgia skyline behind him was a violent purple as the sun began to set. He took the first step, and then the next, and the walkway seemed to stretch out forever.

Until he reached the door. His stomach knotted itself into a ball the size of a basketball. All he needed to do was reach out, push the doorbell.

All he needed to do was push the button.

Just push the button.

“Push the button, Jim,” he muttered, but he couldn’t uncurl his hand. It refused to budge, and his other hand was clutching his bag, that was pretty useless, too.

His mouth suddenly felt like a million cotton balls had been shoved into it.

How could he have possibly forgotten what he was going to say? It was all he’d been thinking about for weeks. He’d rehearsed it a million times.

Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.

He turned around, and he’s three steps down the porch when the door creaks open behind him, and he hears his voice.

He feels like he might cry.

“Jim?”

His heart hammered itself repeatedly into his adam’s apple, and he swallowed past it. He’s out of breath and panicking when he turns around, blinking furiously to keep his eyes from watering over.

“Bones.”

“What are you doing here?” His voice isn’t hard, but it’s guarded. Bones steps the rest of the way through the front door, closes it quietly behind him.

He starts and stops three different times before he manages to find his voice.

“I drank the scotch you bought.” It’s not at all what he meant to say. Bones frowned, appropriately confused and understandably pissed off as he stares down the steps at Jim. “Funny how I’ve spent the last four years a million light-years away and yet I’ve never felt like more of a stranger.” Jim licked his lips, watched Bones follow the movement.

Bones takes a breath and looks away from Jim, scanning the street below.

“I never should have let you go, Bones.” He snuck forward a step. “Letting you leave the fleet was what you needed, but I never should have let you end us.”

“It’s been five years, Jim.” There’s no wedding band on his finger; Jim eyes his hand as he takes another step forward.

“I haven’t spent a day without thinking of you.”

“Jim…”

“I got every voicemail.”

Jim took another step forward. Bones didn’t back away. He looked like he was ready to bolt, but he stayed rooted to the spot. It felt like a bald eagle was trying to claw its way out of his stomach.

“You never called me back,” Bones said finally, his voice cracking at the end.

“I thought you wanted to move on, I thought that was for the best. I was wrong.”

Bones snorted, looking Jim in the eyes for the first time. “You’re damn right you were.”

“I thought you got married.” Jim reached out for his hand, but didn’t touch it. His fingertips hovered over Bones’ knuckles for an infinite second.

“I guess you’re not supposed to marry a rebound.” Bones’ voice is husky, dark, and thick with a drawl.

“I’ve thought about this moment every second since your last message, and now I can’t remember a single thing I meant to say.” Jim laughs, but it’s hollow.

“Shut up,” Bones gritted his teeth, pushing Jim’s hand away. “Just shut up. You’re such an asshole, you know that? You act like the universe revolves around you, like everything depends on _you,_ and you wanna know what really pisses me off?” He’s practically panting, he’s worked himself up so quickly, but he reaches forward with lightning fast movement. At first, Jim expected him to punch or claw; instead, he grabbed a handful of the front of Jim’s shirt, dragging him forward.

The kiss is full of frustration, longing, hurt, and a million other feelings. He pulls back just enough to speak, his mouth moving against Jim’s. “What really pisses me off is that you kick me off your damn ship, don’t even apologize, and I’ve already forgiven you.”

“You have?” Jim mumbles, reaching up to cradle his face between his palms.

“Yes,” Bones growls, and cuts him off with yet another kiss.

 _Finally_ , Jim thinks. He was finally home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading <3


End file.
